The surfaces of Gears of War 4 are pocked with rust and caked with blood. The game's multiplayer mode, or, rather, the glimpse provided by the beta on Xbox One, is a tango of strafing, taking cover, and blasting around corners. It offers nothing new, yet remains delicious in that Cadbury Creme Egg sort of way---rich, satisfying, and almost certainly bad for you.
Gears of War, released in 2006 by Epic Games, was among the first games to legitimize the Xbox 360. The game cemented the aesthetic of an emerging franchise—a decaying post-industrial hellhole where not even blood was brightly colored—and the design template for a nascent platform. Gears was my first online console experience that worked like it was supposed to, and it allowed online multiplayer to colonize console gaming the way it colonized PCs.
The inaugural title perfected a suite of gameplay conceits that define cover-based shooters. A quick button press puts your musclebound manly-man into a crouch against whatever is nearby. An aim button lets him pop out to fire on anything nearby, while a second button press executes sprints and rolls with a wobbly POV influenced by handheld-camera documentarians. It feels as much like a round of Go as it does a gunfight. Controlling space is everything, and knowing the right corners to hold and the right times to move gives combat its shape. Gameplay is slow in a deliberate way, giving even the most improvisational tactics a sense of choreography.
For The Coalition, which inherited the franchise in 2014, *Gears of War 4 *represents a challenge. The studio must keep things fresh yet retain the fundamental signifiers that make Gears what it is---while overcoming an unknown pedigree. This is the studio's first completed game.
The multiplayer beta offers the first chance to experience a new developer's take on Gears, and The Coalition hewed closely to the established MO. The beta comprises two types of 5v5 deathmatch mode and a cooperative fight against AI enemies. The studio made some minor refinements here and there and a tweak or two to how reloading and close-combat work that only serious players will notice. Everyone else will be hard-pressed to identify which Gears they're playing.
Judging from the other gameplay seen so far, The Coalition saved the reinvention for the single-player campaign. Snippets shown during press conferences and in trailers have a survival horror vibe, with cramped Gothic corridors and deadly winds hemming you in. The hypermasculinity of previous games, always more silly than troubling, also seems toned down in favor of relatively grounded character designs and interactions.
None of that comes through in the multiplayer beta. This is Gears as it was 10 years ago: vicious, fun, and far smarter than it gets credit for. It's also safe. For a first showing from a fledgling team tasked with modernizing one one of the strongest franchises of the last generation, that seems wise. But I hope The Coalition offers more tricks than its showing.
